


Dozens of Colours of Thread

by thisaccountisdone



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisaccountisdone/pseuds/thisaccountisdone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Derek became Alpha, he left. Stiles is left to deal with the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dozens of Colours of Thread

It had been a year; a year without Derek, a year with normalcy. It was funny how quickly things reverted back to the way they were before. He still had to look out for Scott but sometimes he could almost forget. Sometimes.  
  
Then there were those times when his mind turned back to those few months after Scott was turned. From there, his mind turned to Derek and he wondered. It’s only been a year. A year isn’t that long, right?  
  
He can’t help but worry about Derek, though. He can’t help but let his mind run loose with possible scenarios. At night, when he’s half asleep, he lets his mind turn to all the thoughts he wouldn’t entertain wide awake. The thoughts are never the same except for one; _Derek’s alone_.  
  
Then there are times when he turns a corner and there’s a flash of black hair, black jacket and his heart speeds up. His feet begin moving faster and the world is spinning. After a few moments, he realizes it isn’t Derek. It’s never Derek and yet he keeps believing it is. It’s all he can do.  
  
It’s only been a year.  
  
That’s become his mantra. Time used to move by so quickly. Now, it moves at a snail’s pace. The day seems much too long and the night even longer. It doesn’t matter what he tries, nothing passes the time. Everything is boring and bland. The world has taken on a grey tint.  
  
Once he tried drinking. He got through half a glass before he realized he didn’t care enough to finish it. It tasted like ashes on his tongue and it burned his throat like fire. He didn’t see any point to getting drunk, either. He’d just wake up feeling like shit and he already has enough of that.  
  
Drinking was off the table.  
  
There were other things to fill the time, though. School worked well enough on the weekdays. He woke up, went to school, did his work, and went to lacrosse. Then he came home and did his schoolwork. After that, he would read or surf the Internet. Most of the time, he would fall asleep at his desk hunched over his keyboard or a book.  
  
The weekends were a different story, though. At first, Lydia tried. She roped Allison, Scott, and even Jackson and Danny into operation “Cheer Stiles Up”. It lasted about two weeks before she realized it was a hopeless cause. There was something depressing about having Lydia Martin give up on you.  
  
Mostly, he spent his weekends at the computer or walking aimlessly about the woods. There was once a time when walking around the woods alone would have scared him. But now he didn’t care. He had a trail he followed every day up to the burnt up shell of the old Hale house. Some days he didn’t have the strength to go inside. Some days he just sat on the front step, hands running over the wood.  
  
Then there were the days when he had enough strength to go inside. He would slowly walk around the downstairs, not caring that at any moment the house could come crashing down around him. (Honestly, sometimes he wished it would.) He would sit at the couch for a few minutes, staring at the wall, the ground; wherever his eyes roamed. After that, he would get up and slowly walk up the stairs.  
  
He kept one hand running up the balustrade. The old, beat up wood was comforting to him. It made him feel like he still had a grip on his life. When he walked along the upstairs, he kept a hand on the wall at all times. His eyes took in every inch of the house he had seen hundreds of times before. They always had a way of fixating on some new speck of dust or a spider working on a cobweb. He was sure by now he knew every patch of black and every crack in the wood. He saw it behind his eyelids when he was drifting asleep.  
  
The last thing he did was go to the room where Derek slept. There’s a beaten up old box spring mattress on the floor. Stiles sits down on it and traces the springs that stick up with shaking fingers. Derek left a shirt behind; a black one with a little tear in the side. It still smells like Derek; sweat, woods, smoke. Stiles refuses to take it home with him. For some reason, he thinks if he does, it’ll lose its scent.  
  
He picks that up and slowly turns it over in his hands, rubbing the fabric between his fingers, staring at it like it holds some answer to where its owner is. Maybe it does. He has every fold and crease in that shirt memorized. There are times when he wishes he could envelop himself in that scent and never leave.  
  
Then, in the corner, there are two books. They are falling apart; spine broken, pages yellowed and falling apart. It’s obvious Derek has read them over and over again. Once Stiles couldn’t sleep and he sat in the corner reading them until sunlight peeked through the window.  
  
One is a book on philosophy that’s name has worn off the faded cover. The other is a book of Grimm’s fairy tales. Oddly, the only pages in that book that aren’t yellowed and bent are the ones that contain Little Red Riding Hood. Those pages almost look new except for on the first page and last page where the corners are bent down.

 

Stiles never reads Little Red Riding Hood.  
  
He’s often thought of bringing the books home but in the end he just leaves them where they were beside the mattress. The thought of having them in his room seems wrong somehow. When he looks at them, he sees Derek alone in the middle of the night, reading with his super vision. He sees Derek skipping over Little Red Riding Hood with drawn eyebrows and clouded eyes. He sees Derek with the philosophy book on his chest, arms crossed over it, pondering the meaning of life.  
  
He wonders why Derek chose that book. Maybe he wanted to see if it would contain some type of answer for what happened to his family.  
  
Derek never mentioned it but one day Stiles figured it out. He was sitting on that couch downstairs, staring at a speck of dust, and suddenly, there it was. He figured out the connection to Kate. No one else had; not even Allison. He didn’t plan on telling them.  
  
It’s only been a year and he’s completely fallen apart.  
  
Truth be told, it only took him a week. It started with worry and then suspicions confirmed when Jackson couldn’t feel Derek’s presence in town anymore. It took Stiles two more weeks to work up the nerve to go inside the house and, when he did, it was abandoned yet again. The only traces of Derek left were the mattress, shirt, and two books.  
  
Most nights, Stiles couldn’t sleep. He would drag himself to school on two or three hours of restless sleep and somehow make it through the day. It was only after about a week of going days at a time with only 6 hours of sleep or none at all that he could finally fall asleep decently. Then the cycle would begin again.  
  
His dad didn’t bother him about it. He didn’t even notice until Mrs. McCall brought it up. Stiles was listening in on the call. “Stiles hasn’t climbed through our window in weeks.” “Last time I saw him he looked like he hadn’t slept for days.” “Scott says he hasn’t talked to Stiles in a week.” His dad was rightfully worried but assumed it was because he wasn’t home much. If only he knew.

  
*****

 

It’s only been a year and Derek is crouching on his windowsill at 3 o’clock in the morning.  
  
It’s only been a year and Stiles has nothing to say.  
  
It’s only been a year and now it’s over.  
  
“A year,” Stiles says quietly, looking down at his hands. He can’t look up at Derek. At any moment, he may look up and find out that it’s nothing but his mind playing tricks. He may look up and his eyes will betray every emotion that is running rampant through him right now. He can’t look up.  
  
“Stiles.” It could have been the wind for as quietly as Derek said it. Stiles can imagine his face right now; a mixture of worry and fear that things won’t go as planned.  
  
“A year,” Stiles repeats because his mind can’t think of anything else. Something’s broken and those two words are on loop. It sounds like a record scratching each time and he wants nothing more than to just block everything out with his hands over his ears.

  
“I’m sorry,” Derek whispers. There’s a tone in his voice that Stiles doesn’t recognize; something that makes him look up. Derek’s face is haggard, eyes wide and haunted. He’s digging his hands into the windowsill like if he doesn’t hold on as tightly as he can, he’ll fall over. His lips are pursed together and trembling ever so slightly.  
  
He is completely and utterly vulnerable.  
  
That scratched record inside of Stiles breaks completely and words come pouring out.  
  
“It’s been a year, Derek. A year. A fucking _year_. Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? It’s been a _year_!” He throws his hands in the air and he’s screaming now. His mind keeps repeating the words “a year” over and over again. _A year, a year, a year_. It’s suddenly hit him just how long that really is; how much can happen.  
  
Derek doesn’t say anything and somehow, that’s even more infuriating.  
  
“It’s been so hard, Derek. I-“ He chokes up, eyes- wide and filled with tears- searching Derek’s eyes for some sort of reaction. They’re blank. “I haven’t slept in days. I can barely make myself eat. I didn’t know I’d miss you so much until you were gone.”  
  
Once again, there’s no reply.  
  
“Say something!” Stiles screams. That last thin thread tethering him to sanity has broken. His chest is heaving and he’s convulsing with sobs. He hasn’t cried in nearly a year.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d care,” Derek finally says.  
  
It takes a few minutes for Stiles to choke back the sobs and hiccups. It takes him another few minutes to figure out what to say. When he does, he’s not sure if it’s the right thing but it’s the only thing he can think of.  
  
“I didn’t realize I loved you when you were here. I didn’t realize until a month after you were gone and I went to your house. I went inside and walked around, up the stairs, through the rooms. Then, lastly, I went into your room and…” He can’t speak. His throat has closed up and tears are brimming in his eyes, threatening to drown him once again. He pushes out the words in a hollow whisper. “I could feel that you were gone. I’ve never felt emptier.”  
  
Derek is staring at him. That blank numbness has been replaced by a thousand different feelings that Stiles can’t recognize. In the end, it all adds up to one overwhelming thing- _regret_.  
  


Stiles laughs. Somehow, he’s moved past the point of hysterical sobbing to hysterical laughter. He’s laughing so hard that he has to clutch his stomach and his ribs ache. Then, the laughter is dying back into sobs.  
  
Suddenly, Derek is _right there_. His arms are wrapped tightly around Stiles like he’s afraid to let go. His breath is hot on Stiles’ neck. Stiles bunches his hand in Derek’s shirt and buries his head in his neck. He lets the sobs rock his body until finally the tidal wave is over. Derek keeps whispering the word “sorry” over and over.  
  
Every now and then, a dry sob escapes but after an hour, they stop. Stiles latches his arms around Derek, holding him with as much strength as he can muster. He’s not going to let Derek go if he doesn’t have to. Derek lies back in the bed, dragging Stiles down with him. He lightly strokes Stiles’ hair until he can feel the slow breathing and rhythmic heartbeat of a human asleep. He lets himself fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I cried while writing this. First time that's happened.


End file.
